Tuesday, November 27, 2012

War and corruption in the Congo

The future for Africa does look bright
except for a couple of trouble spots. One of the most troubling is the Republic of Congo. War has plagued the nation for
many years, and there is some suspicion that neighboring countries are
contributing to the fighting.

Also creating trouble in Congo
is the terribly corrupt government that is supported by western aid
money.

A couple of stories today help explain what is going on in the Congo. First,
we look at how western aid has failed the country, then a story on how corruption
has kept the population of Congo
hungry.

The knee-jerk reaction of Britain and other western countries is therefore to give Congo aid.
And the only way of spending 0.7% of our GDP on aid is to give it to
governments. But has Congo got a government? In 1997 the remnants of the
Mobutu regime were pushed out by the armies of Rwanda and Uganda.
They replaced him with Laurent Kabila, a former revolutionary and cafe
owner, living in exile. When he rejected the Rwandans' tutelage, they
had him murdered and replaced him with his son, Joseph.

To
legitimise Joseph Kabila the aid donors paid for and organised two
elections, each costing more than a billion dollars. In 2011 that came
out of a national budget of £4.6 billion ($7.3 billion). The elections
satisfied the western political need to give Kabila international
legitimacy so he could now receive aid. But the elections in Congo
divided rather than united. The losers saw them as fraudulent.

After
the election supporters were rewarded, opponents shunned but they live
in different parts of the country so a small war broke out. At the very
moment when the country needed to come together, the western solution
deepened the divisions. It also handed total political and economic
power to a greedy elite incapable of constructing a viable state – even,
as one Congolese academic said, in their own narrow interests.

What
has wrecked the Congo is not lack of aid. It is politics. Aid has
probably made things worse by offering development which may never be
delivered. There is no state capable of delivering it. If ever there was
a case for a country to be under a UN mandate, it is Congo. The United
Nations' current half-baked, ill-thought-out mandate was cruelly exposed
last week as UN troops stood back to allow rebels to take the city of Goma in eastern Congo.

But
there was a second, even more catastrophic contradiction in western
policy. After the Rwandan genocide, western governments, ridden with
guilt, supported the incoming Rwandan regime, a rebel group led by the
charismatic Paul Kagame. He now runs a capable state – perhaps too
capable. Rwanda is a tightly controlled dictatorship, with almost no
press or political freedom. But it uses aid well, it is not stolen. A
succession of British aid ministers from Clare Short to Andrew Mitchell
see Kagame as the saviour of Africa. They gave him money – currently
£83m a year, knowing it will be spent on education, health and other
good things.

Next, a story on how corruption within the Congo government is causing inflation and hunger from IRIN.

The Republic of Congo, which imports over US$240 million worth of food a
year, has seen sharply rising staple food and fuel prices since the
beginning of 2012, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) and a local consumer rights body.

A 25-litre tin of vegetable oil which sold in January 2012 for the
equivalent of $32, is now going for $50, while less than 5kg of cassava
has gone up from $1 to $2.6, according to Dieudonné Moussala, chairman
of the Consumer Rights Association.

He also said the price of a litre of kerosene had risen from 70 US cents to $2.6 on the black market in the same period.

"I now buy a kilo of meat from the slaughterhouse for 3,500 CFA francs
[$7], whereas it used to cost less than 2,000 [$4],” Carine Moutombo,
32, a mother of three, told IRIN.

"It is difficult to get by and eat one’s fill. The cooking money is no longer enough," said Moutombo.

"All the prices of imported frozen products have increased because of
corruption in the supply chain [from entry at the port of Pointe-Noire
to small retailers]," said Moussala.

"There are too many unofficial taxes and too many checkpoints in the
supply chain. Retailers and other importers are corrupt at all levels.
In the end, they pass on any losses to poor consumers - hence the surge
in commodity prices," said Moussala.

"While we have not found the solution to all the problems [related to
imports]… We still have a long way to go. That is why our country’s
struggle against food insecurity is key in terms of public policy," said
Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Rigobert Maboundou in April.
According to him the Congo is a "food-deficit country".

To limit imports and ensure food security, Congo launched in 2010 a US$26 million project
to build "new agricultural villages". With this project, "we have
halved the import bill for eggs. We produced 6.6 million eggs in 2011,
while imports are estimated at 13 million eggs per year," said
Maboundou.

In 2011, Congo also leased 180,000 hectares of arable land to a group of
South African farmers who have managed to plant 1,200 hectares of
maize.

"The Congo imports almost half of the essential commodities it needs.
You need to know this to understand current soaring prices. Imported
products contain imported inflation,” André Kamba, chief of staff at the
Ministry of Trade and Supply, told IRIN.